Microsoft's Satya Nadella Shown Up By Confused Cortana Assistant

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was a little embarrassed at a Salesforce conference today when he tested the company's personal virtual assistant during a presentation. Slightly fluffing the question 'Show me my most at-risk opportunities', Nadella was dismayed to find Cortana offering him a Bing page with the search term 'Show me to buy milk at this opportunity'. Two further efforts to discover the exposure of his shares failed to achieve their aim, and eventually the CEO of Microsoft gave up. The fact that he stumbled over his first attempt at the question seemed to floor Cortana, which uses the 'Einstein' AI engine, and which has been more praised for its accurate speech recognition than its ability to understand what an array of interpreted words actually mean.

Comments

Cant see why this is a problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

He asked a basically nonsense question. If i ask "why is a fish?" and cortana doesn't understand, is this news?

Props, though

[Anonymous Coward]

Props for attempting voice recognition in a live demo. Most people don't even trust a network connection for a demo.

Re:The Milk Was Most At Risk

[Dutch Gun]

This isn't the first time faulty speech recognition has embarrassed Microsoft during a live demo. Anyone remember the last time this happened?

To be fair to Cortana, how exactly do you respond to "Show me my most at-risk opportunities"? What does that even mean? Who talks like that?

Re:What did the question even mean?

[Bite The Pillow]

Here it is used in context:

Supply lines today are longer, and more complex than ever, and it is vital to proactively identify at-risk opportunities in your supplier base to prevent costly delays and disruptions. With global capabilities, extensive industry experience, and multi-cultural expertise, SAI Global can help you quickly identify critical supplier non-compliances, and target program investments where theyâ(TM)ll have the greatest impact.

It is business jargon, understood by the kind of people that Microsoft has the best relationship with - mid to upper management.

So what you said was "I have no idea about business. When someone says things that are outside my experience I assume there is no meaning, and all of business is therefore meaningless to me."

There is a certain amount of truth to that, but it's no different from developers talking about DRY and Single Responsibility Principle, and the like. I want my code to be dry? How does it get wet? Does that mean the drought is ending or just beginning?

We have a common language, known as jargon, that makes communication more efficient. As does every industry. If you don't understand it, you can ask an actual question, or you can sound like an anonymously retarded window-licking asshole brained fart sandwich. So kudos for posting anonymously, and wasting 5 peoples' mod points. Because obviously the are just as much fart sandwich, and would have up modded something just as ignorant. Might as well be 5 all in one place.

Re:What did the question even mean?

[bloodhawk]

all you are showing is a lack of knowledge of business. anyone that works in sales or business would have no issues understanding the sentence.

Re:heads are going to roll for this...

[FranTaylor]

This was a rookie mistake that no CEO should ever make. One NEVER tries a demo for the first time before an important audience.

Steve Ballmer made exactly the same mistake with the surface tablet, it failed him during a demo.

Bill Gates crashed Windows 98 while demoing on live television.

So EVERY Microsoft CEO has made the "rookie mistake that no CEO should ever make"!

Cool!

Re:Did he throw a chair?

[Cederic]

Sorry but all these repeated comments on the same subject, when it's never been mentioned before, sound like astroturfing and agenda building.

Lots of ACs and no named people? Don't trust you. Feels like it's one person trying to push racial division.